See the update at the end of this post with the appeal judges' rationale.

ORIGINAL POST, OCT. 31, 12:18 P.M.: An appeals panel has upheld the conviction of Michael Kevin Lallana, the mortgage company employee and family man who twice slipped his semen into an unknowing female co-worker's water bottle.

Lallana's defense had contended in the appeal to a special panel of Orange County Superior Court judges that their client could not be guilty of misdemeanor battery because no battery occurred.See also:

Lallana, a USC grad who lived with his wife and daughter in Fullerton, entered the Orange office
of a female he used to supervise before their mortgage company
relocated from Newport Beach and--when no one was
looking--placed his ejaculate into the water bottle on her desk, agreed jurors who
last year convicted Lallana of doing the dirty deed twice.

The
first time, the woman got sick after drinking from the bottle and tossed
it. She saved the bottle the second time, DNA testing was done and
those results doomed Lallana in trial court.

His attorney, E. Thomas Dunn Jr., told appeals judges in September his client should not have
been convicted of battery because while he did secretly splooge into the water bottles and got off on the notion of his pretty co-worker drinking it, battery is a crime that involves
action by force, such as being struck. Leaving a bottle alone on a
desk does not rise to battery, Dunn argued.

Deputy District Attorney Anna Chinowth
essentially countered that whether Lallana jizzed in a bottle or
directly into the woman's mouth, the outcome was the same: Jane Doe
drank his man juice against her wishes.

The appeals panel agreed with the jury, reports the Orange County District Attorney's office. The latest development sets Lallana up to serve his sentence--six months in jail, three years of probation and lifetime registration as a sex offender--which had been held up by the appeal.

UPDATE, OCT. 31, 3:03 P.M.: I figured the appeals judges found battery had occurred in this case because Lallana's man batter was in the water bottle. Actually, precedence was on the side of his conviction, as the jurists cited a similar case in Missouri where a victim unknowing drank semen from a mug.

From the state ruling by judges Ron Bauer, Clay Smith and Craig Griffin:

The essence of the crime is an unconsented, offensive, physical contact.
In addition, that offensive contact between the aggressor and the
victim need not be direct, but rather "Can be done indirectly by causing an object to touch the other person."

. . .

Placing semen in another person's water bottle from which that person
later drank constitutes physical contact and amounts to the "use of
force or violence' as contemplated by (the law)."

Dunn, Lallana's attorney, has not indicated whether he will appeal the misdemeanor conviction further. To do so, he must ask judges Bauer, Smith and Griffin to send another appeal to the Fourth District Court of Appeals in Santa Ana. If that request is denied, Dunn can turn to higher courts for relief.